White Hematite???

Ok Crystal Experts... A question for you..
I have been carrying around hematite for many many years and never have I come across such a thing as White Hematite.

I ask because as I am surfing EBay.. (which I probably really shouldn't do) I came across an auction for "WHITE MAGNETIC HEMATITE".


I did do a search but I did not find any hematite listing with a color of white. Has anyone heard of this before?

Thre are a couple of adverts for 'white hematite' jewellery on the web but not enough information is given to be definitive on what the crystal actually is.

Hematite can be grey and grey can pale towards white, so it might be some form of polished grey hematite - though I'm only guessing.

These are covered ("pearlized") with some kind of white iridescent coating - my guess is synthetic mica powder in acrylic resin, the same thing that is used over plastic to create cheap imitation pearls. Since they're supposedly magnetic, the beads themselves could be hematite with associated magnetite (since hematite by itself is NOT magnetic), magnetite, or plain old steel. You'd have to break open one of the beads to be sure (a mostly-hematite bead would yield a dark red powder when crushed).

Hematite can be metallic dark gray or black, submetallic reddish-gray or dark purple, or nonmetallic dark red or orange (red ochre). It is never white and cannot be made to be that way (synthetic iron oxide is red or black).

Lorena

oh Ironwing!
I think you just solved a mystery that has eluded me for over a year!
I had found a small, almost round,rock in a rock shop in a place I used to work.
It looked definately "sub-metallic"...greyish, silverish, with a reddish tint, but not really very shiny...looked a lot like iron.

I had taken a few courses in both geology, and gemology way back when...and this rock's appearance just had me stumped.

But since this place I worked at had a resident Blacksmith...who was a good friend of mine, I decided to see if there was any metal compound in this mineral's make-up.

Heated, and whacked on the anvil, we discovered that it didn't fragment very cleanly, and was way too easily crushed to powder...

But I hadn't even thought that it might be Hemitite!

I am really thinking that this is the mystery rock!

Now...if you could only help me solve the mystery of those damn Boji stones...

Ironwing, Thank you. I had a suspicion that the must have been covered in something after I found an aution with "gold hematite".
Why anyone would want to cover such a beautiful stome is beyond me.
I actually emailed the seller after I found the second auction and aked what they used to coat the stones with... this was the response:
"From what I understand they are electrically powered coated with the same coating the use to make glass pearl beads."

Chronata it looks like we both learned something today
Minderwiz you must have found the same sites I did. Typical of EBay, selling something they don't know anything about.

I don't know why they call Hematite magnetic, isn't a lodestone something completely different? I beleve that has magnetic properties ( at least from what I have read. )

How deceptive!! At least you got to the "truth" anyway. I had never heard of this practice for hematite before. Frankly I don't get it either. Why would someone do this to hematite? The only thing I can think of is it is just another gimmick that makes something sell.

I have been trying to sell some of my jewellery on E-Bay without much luck, you see my stones are all natural (as in not cheap and gimmicky). Basically you get what you pay for.

This thread cheered me up, it's nice to know that some people are thinking about the "truth",

Ruby7

hematite & lodestone

Hematite and lodestone (a variety of magnetite - see my post on the "lodestone" thread on this forum) are both black metallic, and can look very much alike.

HEMATITE is ferric oxide - Fe2O3. It's not magnetic and yields a dark red powder when crushed.

MAGNETITE is ferrous oxide - Fe3O4. It is magnetic (will attract a magnet) and some pieces are natural magnets themselves (lodestone), and will attract small pieces of steel. Magnetite yields a dark gray or black powder when crushed.

Both are iron ores. In some rocks (such as Australian "tiger iron" and other banded irons) they can be found together. To make things more confusing, some magnetite crystals will alter to hematite but retain the original magnetite crystal shape (fortunately, this variety isn't used in jewelry - it is most often seen in magnetite sand.)


Tucson Gem Shows start today! I'm off to look at rocks - Wheee!

Lorena

Lorena thank you. I knew those two were completely different and it does irritate when someone misrepresents something they are selling.

I love Hematite, it is my favorite stone and I was thinking about getting some beads and trying my hand at making a bracelet ( I used to do some beading years ago and I think I remember how )

I would be upset if I bought some from this buyer and they turned out to not be hematite after all..

Ruby I feel the same way you do, you get what you pay for. Maybe I had better sick to the ones I can touch. Good luck on EBay.

One other thing to be wary of, Majecot...

Recently, I bought some beads that I thought were natural Hematite...that were really really cheap.

Turns out that they were a synthetic stone called Hemitine!

The Mail Order place took them back, and I sent them a little more money for the real thing.

But do beware...they can look almost identical!